I wasn’t around when Jen died yesterday. Because she kicked me out. I left the hospital knowing I’d never see her again. I told myself that it was okay, that this was the way it should be – just her and her family together at the end. But it wasn’t okay. I was her family too and her final act towards me was one of rejection – the past repeating itself until the bitter end.
Her last ever word to me was ‘out’.
When she’d woken up yesterday, after a solid sleep where I’d eventually fallen asleep beside her in that narrow hospital bed, I knew it would be her final day. Her colour had changed overnight from yellow to a scary shade of grey, a deathly shade. And as soon as her eyes opened, she was in agony, whimpering and unable to speak more than a few words at a time. She kept crying my name and there was nothing I could do to comfort her.
I raged at the nurses to turn up her morphine but they said we had to wait for medical rounds with her specialist – and the medical rounds were still hours away. In the meantime they put cold compresses on the back of her neck and on her forehead, which did fuck all to help her. It killed me to watch her in that much pain. It killed me.
Marcia, Pete and Luke arrived together just after seven and I went home to quickly shower and change before heading straight back to the hospital. Soon after, the three of them left to meet with the hospital’s chaplain. When Marcia stood up, her legs gave way. Pete and Luke helped her walk out, holding an arm each.
Not long after that, Jen’s specialist walked in with a bunch of university students trailing warily behind him. I asked him to turn up the morphine and he said he was already onto it.
I was taken aback to see that the Rapunzel girl from the café was one of the students. And she was watching me. I could tell she was judging me when she heard the specialist say that Jen was my wife. It was obvious that I was into her in the café and then she saw that my wife was dying. Of course she judged me. Who wouldn’t?
And even though I didn’t know the girl at all, it mattered to me that she was judging me. I wanted her to know the truth. When she looked at me, my guard fell, and I walked out fast before crying like a baby at the unfairness of everything.
When I finally got my shit together, I went back up to Jen’s room where I was stunned to find the girl was still there, by herself at Jen’s bedside. She held Jen’s hand in one of hers and stroked her hair with the other as she hummed softly to Jen who had her eyes closed. I swallowed the lump in my throat. With her long golden curls, her gentle expression, and that sweet music she made, she was just like an angel watching over Jen. A real life angel.
When she saw me, she didn’t have the judgemental look from before.
Jen opened her eyes and it was clear the medicine had taken hold. ‘Rapunzel and Toby sitting in a tree,’ she drawled.
Even on her death bed, spaced out on drugs, she was still trying to set me up with girls. Did she honestly believe that if I met someone else, I’d be okay without her? How deluded she was.
But my heart did skip a beat (and I hated myself for it) when the girl’s beautiful bluey-green eyes locked on mine. I was relieved when she left.
Jen was awake on and off over the next half an hour, but the morphine did its job quickly. When she opened her eyes after that, they rolled backwards so I could only see the whites, and what she slurred I couldn’t understand.
I knew I should have used the time to say goodbye to her but I just couldn’t. Instead, I pulled out my phone and looked through all the photos of the two of us. I talked to her about all the places we’d been and all the things we’d done when those shots were taken.
When I came to the end of the camera roll, I sat with her freezing hand in both of mine. ‘Jen, this is the last time we’ll be together, just you and me. I know you’re listening, so I want you to know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. All of my favourite memories have you in them. Listen, I know you never stopped beating yourself up about what happened, so I need you to know that I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.’ I kissed her fingers. ‘And I’m grateful for this time that we had together again.’ My lips began to tremble. ‘Beautiful girl, I love you. I hope wherever you go, that there’s every food you fang for and footy every day and that you’re surrounded by children. See you later, my sweetheart.’ It was impossible to hold myself together when I kissed her unresponsive lips.
Her family walked in with the parish priest. I wished she was awake to see. She would have laughed so hard at a priest by her bedside. Jen was the poster child for atheism.
‘Do you want to stay while we do her last rites, Toby?’ the priest asked in a sombre voice.
And for the first time in over an hour, Jen spoke. ‘No!’ she moaned with her eyes closed. ‘No, no!’
‘Sweetness, what is it?’ Pete bent over her. ‘What’s wrong?’
She slurred something indecipherable and slipped out of it again.
The priest set up his stuff on her trolley and she called out. ‘Tobes . . . out.’
My heart stopped.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘Tobes . . . out . . . out!’
‘You want Toby to leave, Jenny?’ Pete stroked her hair, and gave me a shrug with a confused look on his face.
‘Out!’ she wailed, her eyes still closed, and then her head flopped forwards so her chin rested in her breastbone. ‘Tobes,’ she mumbled, as Pete lifted her head and rested it back up against the pillow. ‘Out.’
Luke started crying in soft sobs. Marcia drew him close to her.
‘Stay,’ Pete mouthed to me as the priest opened the Bible and took two steps towards Jen. ‘She’s asleep. She won’t know. Stay.’
But I couldn’t stay. She wanted me out. I couldn’t deny her that final request. So I took one last look at her and left.
I drove home in a haze and sat at the dining table, chain-smoking for the rest of the day.
I got a call from Pete just after John forced me to eat the pasta he’d brought home from Black Salt for dinner.
‘She’s in heaven, mate,’ Pete whispered before hanging up.
John came out of the bathroom, stark naked.
‘She gone?’
‘She’s gone,’ I sobbed.
Several minutes later he said, ‘She died on a Monday, just like she wanted, eh?’
‘I was born on a Monday, I want to die on a Monday.’ Jen had announced more than once. ‘That would make it neat,’ she said. ‘Everyone hates Mondays. When does anything exciting ever happen on a Monday anyway? You may as well die on one.’
‘Can you go get some pants on, please, mate?’ I sniffed, wiping the last of my tears away.
He came back out again, dressed in his boxer shorts. He cracked open two stubbies. We took a couch each and drank in the dark.
‘So did it just happen in her sleep?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know.’
His phone screen lit up the room with a text message and he responded. His phone pinged several times over the next ten minutes and I nursed my beer, grateful for the silence.
He eventually put his phone away.
‘Renee?’ I asked.
He snorted. ‘Nah, mate.’
‘I should’ve guessed.’ I sighed.
‘Want to see some pics? There’s this chick who’s been coming into Black Salt lately who just sent me her nudes. She’s hot, Tobes. Want me to AirDrop them to you?’ He pulled out his phone again.
‘Really, really no.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said the man in a committed relationship with Renee for the past fourteen months.
I downed the rest of the beer and went to bed.
I found out in the morning, in a series of texts from Luke, what happened in the end with Jen. Apparently it was peaceful. She opened her eyes just a fraction for a couple of seconds about two hours after I left, and she smiled before going back to sleep. A few minutes later, she took two big gasps of air, one after the other. And then she stopped breathing.
The funeral was this afternoon. Marcia and Pete had the funeral directors, who were close family friends, on standby and organised days ago. Jen’s gravesite was ready and waiting, so as soon as her body was released and the paperwork was handed over by the hospital, they came to collect her.
We stood around a hole in the ground with a civil celebrant less than twenty-four hours after she died, in accordance with her wishes – ‘Don’t let me hang around in a morgue with dead people, being dead!’ It was a quick funeral. ‘Make it short, just like my fucking life. No church service, just bury me and be done with it.’ No eulogies. ‘No thanks, no pathetic stories about what an inspiration I was, yuck!’ And there were only six people there. ‘No hangers on, just you guys and Nan and Pop.’
Throughout the short service, I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. It wasn’t until the coffin was lowered that I noticed I’d been standing on my own far away from her family, who were all huddled together.
I walked over to Jen’s grandparents who were seated next to her grave on camp chairs, and squatted down to give them my condolences. Their faces had the look of people who knew how wrong it was that they had outlived their only granddaughter.
Marcia buried her head in my shirt and sobbed until the shirt was soaking. Still, I felt nothing. Pete and Luke returned my wordless hugs with flaccid arms.
I walked back to the ute and the radio came on when I turned on the ignition. Christina Perri’s haunting voice floated out of the speakers. ‘A Thousand Years’. Our bridal dance.
I stayed parked at the cemetery until I was expected at Mum and Dad’s for dinner. John was already there. The clang of the cutlery and crockery was the only noise throughout the meal.
My parents had become instant friends with Jen’s when they moved in as next door neighbours twenty-seven years ago. I knew it had been a tough day for my family too, being close to Jen for most of her life and then not being at her funeral. I was glad when dinner was over and I could finally go home.
John said he’d be staying at Renee’s overnight. He would’ve dreaded being around for a repeat crying performance from me so his sudden desire to ‘check in on the old girl’ didn’t surprise me.
Back home I paced around the lounge room, not knowing what to do with myself. I smoked some more. How could I wake up tomorrow, go to work, and carry on with life as normal when a few hours ago I’d thrown a fistful of dirt and a blue iris over my wife’s coffin as it lay six feet down? How was anything ever going to be okay again?
My phone rang.
I didn’t recognise the number displayed. Random condolence caller or prospective client? I answered it only to have one less call to return in the morning.
‘Watts Building. Toby speaking.’
There was silence on the other end. And then a faltering female voice. ‘Um, hi, Toby. It’s Lily here. I’m, um, I’m the student doctor from the hospital. Um, you know the one yesterday, who Jenny—’
‘I know who you are,’ I swallowed hard. ‘How’d you get my number?’
‘Um, Jenny gave it to me. I didn’t ask for it,’ she added quickly. ‘I didn’t want it. I mean, it’s not that I didn’t want it, it’s just that she gave it to me without me asking for it. It was Jenny who made me ring you. No, I mean I wanted to ring you anyway – she didn’t actually make me. Oh Jesus.’
I said nothing.
‘Toby, I’m so sorry she died.’
‘Thank you.’ I got stuck on the words and had to clear my throat.
‘Yesterday Jenny made me promise to ring you next week, and I said yes, but deep down I thought I probably wouldn’t ever have the guts to. But when I was back at the hospital this morning and found out she’d died, I really, really wanted to ring you. Not because she asked me to, but because I wanted to. I hope it’s okay that I have.’
‘It’s okay.’ I walked into my bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and placed my head in my hands.
‘When’s the funeral? I thought I might come along if you didn’t mind.’
‘Today. It was today.’
‘Oh.’ She was silent for a bit. ‘Are you okay?’
Just like yesterday in Jen’s room, she made me cry again. As if I hadn’t cried enough already, I was crying on the phone to a girl I didn’t know.
‘Toby, are you alone?’
‘Yeah.’ I choked.
‘Do you want me to come over?’
I didn’t even need to think about it. ‘Yeah.’
‘I’m glad. I really wanted to see you. What’s your address?’
I wiped my tears roughly and told her how to find me.
‘Scarborough, great. I’m close by in City Beach. I’ll be there soon.’
I hung up and stared at the phone in my hand. ‘What the fuck have you done, Jen?’
My doorbell rang half an hour later. I opened the door to find her standing there, holding two take-away coffees and with a questioning expression in her bluey-green eyes.
‘Flat white with one?’ She held one cup out. ‘I made sure it’s got sugar in it.’
I took it from her. ‘Thanks. Come in.’
She brushed past me – close enough that I felt her body heat – and she followed me into the lounge room. She stood in the middle of the room, looking around at the prints on the walls.
‘This is just stunning.’ She took a step closer to the photo of a Cable Beach sunset. ‘Who took this?’
‘I did.’
‘Did you take all of these?’ She waved her arm at the walls.
‘I did, yeah.’
‘Serious? But you said Watts Building on the phone.’
‘I’m a building supervisor.’ I kicked at the carpet with the point of my sneaker.
‘So you’re not a photographer?’ She frowned.
‘Nope. Just a builder.’
‘Oh. Do you sell your photos on the side?’
I blew my cheeks out. ‘Nope.’
‘So, these are just for you? You don’t make any money out of them?’
‘Pretty much, yeah.’
‘That’s not right, Toby.’ Her eyes zoned in on mine. ‘That’s not right.’
Boom. She’d got me right in the weak spot.
She walked up to another print. It was a dawn shot at Sunshine Beach in Noosa.
‘This is my favourite. It’s the most perfect beach photo I think I’ve ever seen.’ She stood there staring at it.
It was my favourite too.
‘Do you want to sit down? Lily, isn’t it?’ I cleared my throat again. I wished my words would stop getting stuck in there.
She perched herself on the edge of the couch, watching me while she took sips of her coffee.
I sat hugging my knees on the carpet facing her. ‘I’m glad you came. I’ve been thinking about you.’
‘Me too, a lot,’ she said softly. ‘Thinking about you, I mean, not myself. God! What the hell is it with you? I can’t string two words together without sounding like an idiot whenever I’m around you.’ She looked away, blushing.
‘I feel strange around you too.’ My heart sped up. Then I remembered why she was here and I hated myself for noticing that she was bare chested under that low-cut dress. I hated myself for wanting to touch her curls. I hated myself for wanting so badly to take her to bed.
‘Toby, I’m sorry about Jenny.’ She slid down off the couch and sat on the floor, facing me. ‘She told me briefly what happened. You must have loved her an awful lot to get back together when she was sick.’
‘We never really got back together.’ I scratched my head. ‘I looked after her, but it wasn’t really a marriage anymore.’
She blew on her coffee and kept her eyes fixed on me.
I tugged on my shoelaces. ‘She was still in love with the prick who walked out on her when she got sick. The one she left me for.’
She put the coffee down and inched forward, closer to me. She rested both her hands on my knees. I felt their warmth, even through my jeans.
‘That’s an incredibly kind thing you did.’
Bloody hell, the hot tears burned my eyelids again. I turned away from her and when I turned back again her eyes were brimming with tears too. She was revealing herself to me in those eyes. And what I saw was pain. Whether it was from the boyfriend who left her or pain from something else, I couldn’t tell. But it was there and it was real. And all I wanted was to take away her pain and mine.
I got up onto my knees and leaned closer to her, cupping one hand around her neck.
‘Don’t be sad,’ I whispered.
She leaned forward and kissed away the tears that had escaped from me before her mouth found mine. We kissed long and slow.
I slid my hand down off the back of her neck and onto her shoulder, dropping the strap of her dress down her arm. Then I slid off the other strap and kissed the hollow of her neck.
She shivered. ‘Toby, are you sure you want to do this?’
I could barely speak with arousal. ‘More than anything. What about you? Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘More than anything.’
Our kissing got more desperate.
She stood up and let her dress fall to the floor. She was left wearing only on a pair of tiny pink cotton knickers. She reached down and pulled them off her legs.
I was awestruck. She was like a mermaid, a goddess. Her hair partly hid her breasts and her willowy curves had me hypnotised.
I held my hand out.
She took it and I pulled her gently down onto the carpet. I rolled on top of her and kissed her everywhere, tasting her salty tears mixed in with her sweet almond skin. I kissed along her collarbones, and then her nipples, and her belly, her hips, between her legs. She let out long low moans and her fingers played with my hair while my tongue found its way inside her.
‘I want you,’ she whispered between gasps.
I stood up and threw off my T-shirt and jeans. She helped me pull off my underwear and she reached across to her purse. I slipped on the protection she handed me.
And then I loved her in a way I’d never loved anyone before.
She melted me with her kisses, and her touch, and her blueygreen eyes, and when she cried my name out loud with her orgasm, I came too.
I rolled onto my back afterwards and stared at the ceiling. I sensed Jen’s presence as if she was standing directly over me, making me feel exposed and ashamed.
Lily turned to face me, biting her bottom lip. ‘What just happened?’
I stroked her still wet cheek with my thumb. ‘I don’t really know.’
‘I don’t have casual sex,’ she said in a rush. ‘I don’t want you to think that’s why I came over. But this meant something to me. It meant more to me than you could—’
‘Shhh.’ I placed my finger on her lips. ‘I don’t do casual either.’ I stretched out my arm for her to come in closer.
I was an arsehole for what I’d just done only hours after burying Jen. A complete and utter arsehole. But I didn’t regret it. Lily was worth the shame, worth the self-hatred. Because she was the first woman who’d ever made love to me and actually meant it. Somebody finally meant it.